Find broken symlinks with Python

Question

If I call os.stat() on a broken symlink, python throws an OSError exception. This makes it useful for finding them. However, there are a few other reasons that os.stat() might throw a similar exception. Is there a more precise way of detecting broken symlinks with Python under Linux?

Answer 1

os.lstat() may be helpful. If lstat() succeeds and stat() fails, then it's probably a broken link.